A Design-Oriented Analysis of Multimodality in English as a Foreign Language

This empirical article investigates multimodality in English as a foreign language, both as seen in the use of multimodal texts as artefacts and pedagogical texts for learning, and through an analysis of the multimodal learning designs. We present observations from a year 10 classroom in Norway that worked with the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Alexie, 2007). We explore a four-week teaching sequence, asking how different modes were involved when the educator designed literacy events around the novel, and how multimodality is present in the students’ meaning making. Our aim is to make explicit and discuss some of the silent literacy practices in English teaching at lower secondary level in Norwegian schools.